Latest / The Rooted Family / Ep 29 | Why Your Mornings Feel So Chaotic (And How to Create a Better Morning Rhythm)

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Ep 29 | Why Your Mornings Feel So Chaotic (And How to Create a Better Morning Rhythm) · The Rooted Family

• Christian Cornish: if we get off to a chaotic start, we feel more reactive, we feel more frustrated. I can a hundred percent say I am way more likely to snap on somebody because I just feel so overwhelmed. You're like, I'm just trying to wake up and let my coffee get to work here. And I can't imagine that many of us are rushing all over the place and have all the yelling and shoes flying everywhere and backpacks lost and suddenly just walking into the rest of our day, just overflowing with the fruit of the spirit. Yeah, there ain't no fruit of the spirit flowing out of us when we are rushed in chaos let's be honest. So what do you think are some of the funny things that happen in our home when we get behind in the mornings? I would say imagine you're in your kitchen. Uh-huh. And you're at the breakfast table and you're expecting everyone to come in all dressed and ready to eat. Combed hair. yeah, but it's not that at all. It's shaggy. Here comes the boys with Horrifically mismatched outfits. Or missing a shirt. Usually missing a shirt. Violet comes in with clothes on that are inside out. Yep. And her hair is a disaster. Uh-huh. And who even knows where the girls are? Because they're actually just woke up late and they're still getting ready. Totally. Because they have the links all good and have to have their makeup on, right? Is that so stranger at a time in our in our raising kids that We have girls that actually want to do their makeup, do their hair before school. Like, when did this happen? And I'm at that point where it's so fresh that I'm usually like, What are you doing? Like, we have other things to do right now. Stop it. Yeah, like seriously, make your lunch, get your water bottle, get to the table. Breakfast is started now. And I guess I can't say that anymore. So I feel like too, when we're super rushed, all the things happen wrong. right before we're about to rock out the door. yeah. Like if we're rushed, we're like, let's go. And we're just like, get your shoes on, get your backpacks. And then one little baby is like, I have a poop. Or like an an older kid is like, I have to poop. A lot of poop. A lot of poop. We're like, come on, could you have not done this earlier in the morning? Something about walking out the door. I don't know if you can relate to this as a listener. But it feels like the babies always have to poop right as you're walking out the door. I mean, having kids in general, you're always losing things, but having seven little kids, I feel like tracking down shoes is a constant problem in this house. And there's nothing worse than trying to get out the door in the morning and you're rushed, you're late, and then then you're missing a shoe. And I think at this point, if you relate to this discussion, it feels like every second counts. Like you don't even have a spare second to delay or to diverge. It's gotta go perfect. Or else it's just become stressful. It's pure chaos. Now I'm curious to hear your thoughts. What does it feel like when we've had a morning like this and now you need to turn around and go about your day? Well, I know for me, if I have a really rushed, chaotic morning, I feel like the rest of my day feels rushed and chaotic. And it may not even be so, but it's like when you get your heart rate up really high in a workout and it's really hard to bring it back down. That's kind of the way my body responds when I have very little time in the morning. I've not created space to just slow down. If I just rush into the work and the school and all the things, my body, it feels like in my mind is just staying fast all day long. I like what you said there about the workout because if you're working out and you do something of really high intensity And I mean, when you go to work out, we all know you gotta sit for a second, take some breaths. And then you you bring that heart rate down and you can go about doing things that you need to do. But it feels like you're struggling so much when you don't give yourself a moment to recover. yeah, continuing with that analogy, you can't sustain a long workout at a super high heart rate. eventually you have to bring it down and you have to pace yourself. And so I think going back to this analogy for the morning, if we do that every single morning and we are living at like a neck break speed all day long, we have no chance to slow down. You know, this is a bigger conversation just than just the morning rhythm, but eventually we burn out. Like that's just the name of the game. We're going to burn out. Yeah, you're 100% right. And that's why we came up with this series, the back to school series. So last week we talked about the family meeting that really grounds and roots us each week. And now we're talking about the morning rhythm, which is the one thing that we do each morning that really is that moment to catch your breath before going into the rest of the day. you know, most of us have kids already heading into school or they're about to go to school. I would personally say that the having a very strong intentional morning rhythm is vital to having peace during the school year because if we don't have a good morning rhythm, one that provides a chance to slow down before the day begins, I think we're just running our families and our kids into the ground. we're not creating a space to be rooted before the day begins. That's a great point. We're not talking about squeezing more productivity in. We're talking about creating a rhythm that brings us to being a rooted family and introducing more peace and intentionality into our lives. Yeah. I think in the space of rhythms and routines, I think oftentimes routines are talked about because they're addressed as a productivity hack. You know, it's like squeeze in what you can in a very intentional rhythmic way, and then you're going to produce more efficiency. But I think you and I look at rhythms in a different way. Of course, they are productive, they are efficient because you're not making a million decisions all the time. You actually are making a decision one time and then doing that over and over again. But I think you and I are so passionate about rhythms for the family because it Does root the family. It creates such a stability that very few things can do for you, obviously, outside of Jesus Christ, who is our ultimate rock and stability. But this is like the practical way that we get to live out our faith and really bring in more peace into our home. Yeah, I love that. it's really a difference between surviving and And thriving. Yeah. And that's what this rhythm is designed to do is to take you from that survival mode of constantly feeling behind, constantly feeling stressed, and really moving toward intentional. we can't control every part of our day. Yeah. but if we get off to a chaotic start, we feel more reactive, we feel more frustrated. I can a hundred percent say I am way more likely to snap on somebody because I just feel so overwhelmed. You're like, I'm just trying to wake up and let my coffee get to work here. And I can't imagine that many of us are rushing all over the place and have all the yelling and shoes flying everywhere and backpacks lost and suddenly just walking into the rest of our day, just overflowing with the fruit of the spirit. Yeah, there ain't no fruit of the spirit flowing out of us when we are rushed in chaos let's be honest. it's so true. That brings up a good point. I mean, how many of us here listening and us too are included in this, want to exhibit the fruit of the spirit in the morning? we ultimately want to give our families and our spouses an atmosphere where love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, goodness, all the fruit of the spirit, is like just a natural flow. From our hearts in our mouths. we want to be able to bless our family with that, especially in the morning. And it's like almost impossible to do that when we are rushed and chaotic or just even trying to make a ton of decisions in the morning. think about decision fatigue. how do you feel like a morning rhythm has helped us in the department? of decision fatigue as a parent. Yeah, decision fatigue is so real. I feel like a good way to put it is we only possess so much capacity for decision making in a day. Yeah. And do you want to use that up before the day started, or would you rather save it and spread it throughout the rest of your day? Or use it for more important decisions than like in the morning when it's Literally the same thing every day. Yeah. I can't I can't function at the end of the day. When I've had to make decisions all day long, there'll be times I even look at you and say, I ain't doing this right now. You're like, I can't make any more decisions. I'm out. Tapping out. Save it for next time. Yeah. I just and I don't want to always be that way because there are times where you do need to keep making decisions later in the day. And I mean we have to be so adaptable and flexible. We can't control everything, right? So much comes up throughout the day, and that's true for everybody. Yeah. you can't control whether you guys wake up in the morning and One of your children is sick. Right. Or you go out and you've got antifreeze all over the ground under your car and you can't drive it. Not speaking from personal experience. That is no, it hasn't happened in the last week at all. No, no, no, no. Well, and you think about too, some of the things that we can't control, like weather, for example. You can't plan your child's emotions. How are they waking up in the morning? Are they gonna be cranky? Are they gonna be happy? there's just so many different things we can't control, but rhythms really do create an opportunity for us to have some level of control and intentionality in our day. We get to decide what we're going to prioritize and how. Yeah, it's really taking that ownership of what we can control. Instead of allowing the day to decide for us. And as you enter into your workplace, or whether you enter you're a business owner and you enter into your own time of work, it's the feeling of walking in ready. I'm ready. I took care of what I needed to. My family's done. Now I'm ready to focus on my work. And we all have work. If you're a stay-at-home mom, you have work that you turn to do. If you are a homeschooling parent, you now have homeschooling that you turn to do. Like we all have a space to work. Yeah. And a space to walk into after the morning is over. And I think we all want to give our best head space and our best critical thinking as parents to the work that is most valuable, not like what are we wearing in the morning or what are we gonna eat. There are decisions in the morning that truly can be made once and then What happens is when you plan your rhythm, which we'll talk about in just a moment, then you can just do that rhythm over and over and over again. And you don't have to make those decisions again. Like, think about Steve Jobs. he's known to have worn the same outfit. it's like a black shirt and jeans or something. Yeah. And he he did that because he was trying to make one less decision in his daily life. I've heard of this though. we've talked about that capsule strategy around clothes where you only have basically enough to get through a week. So you can choose out of what you have to wear. But You don't have all these different decisions to make because you've purposely limited your wardrobe. I mean think about the number of decisions, right? it's shocking to me when we started to delay the all the questions out, but you have to think about what do I eat? What am I gonna wear? What time are we leaving? Who needs to get showered? Or how long has it been since this person showered? where are the backpacks? Are we trying to do some kind of devotional as a family? What are we doing for the devotional? Yeah. Who's missing who's missing their shoes? Yeah. There's so many of these decisions and you make them over and over and over again and and you don't repeat them, it you're just redoing and repeating the cycle every day. I think about you know how annoying it would be If you were required To take a different route to work every single day. By like Friday, if you were required to do that, you would dread driving to work. Wow, that's brilliant. Cause you would just be like, I'm so tired of having to try to figure out a new way to get to the office. And then continuing that analogy, you think about, you eventually are going to avoid wanting to even drive in the first place. Like you're not gonna want to do it. I think a lot of us we actually almost dread waking up in the morning because we know we're going to have to make so many decisions right out the gate. And by the time we get out the door, we're so mentally tired. That we just don't want to do that anymore. Yeah, it's it's that Monday morning dread, but feeling it every day. So I think having a route to the office that you know, like, and trust is the same thing as having a rhythm. It's like a route. Yeah. That you're gonna drive every single day with your family. And it's one that you like, it's one that you know. And one that you trust is gonna get you out the door and have the type of morning that you are so desiring. I think about how much more present we get to be with our family. Like ever since you and I implemented a strategic morning rhythm. This was many, many years ago when we lived in Wisconsin. the difference between when we didn't have a morning rhythm to what we have today is that we just get to be so much more present and calm in the mornings. And that's important to us. And I think that's where everyone has to define for themselves what do they want their family experience to be in the morning before school begins. And if you're not a parent listening, but you are breathing, you also have a morning. We all have mornings, and that's the blessing. I love morning, it is so evident that Jesus' mercies are new every morning for us. His mercies are new, the day is fresh. it's a new day, and we all have the opportunity to start. well and to start strong and maybe you're a homeschool parent so you're not like rushing out the door, but we all have an opportunity to set the tone for ourselves and our family before the full day begins. Yeah. What would you say were some of the things you wanted to have in our home and you used to kind of help shape what our morning looked like. I mean we did this together, but I think you were the one who really did a an excellent job of saying This is how I want our home to feel. And then from there is how we kind of decided what we would create this rhythm around. Yeah, I I remember the thing that triggered for me wanting a morning rhythm when we were first married, we were very disorganized is probably the light way to say it in a lot of ways. We were not timely people, we were not organized in our home with like our physical stuff. And I would say that getting anywhere out the door was like, we have to be there by eight o'clock. We're leaving at like 7 55 and it's like a 12-minute drive. So that just is not working out very well. The math the math didn't math. Yeah, the mathing math and so it wasn't math and so yeah, I think for me, I was sick and tired of how rushed it was for us. and I was Craving more family time in that season. We were having family dinners, but I think I was just craving more time together in the mornings before we all departed our separate ways. And so for me, it really was like, hey, let's have a sit-down family breakfast. That was the beginning of our morning rhythm planning because that was a priority. It was hey, I want to sit down for even 10 to 15 minutes, have devotion together, and just have time. As a family. Yeah. It was important to you to have connection, a moment of devotion, as you said, and an opportunity to to look each other in the eye, really, before we walked out the door. Uh-huh. And and that's what we used to define how we would create a morning rhythm. Yeah. That's not to say that's what we're saying everybody has to have. No. We're encouraging you to do right now is really stop and think. What are some words that you would like to define your morning? When you stop back, what what do you want the atmosphere to feel like? Yeah. What's the foot that you want your family to start out on? This would be a good time to pause the podcast if you are not with your spouse and maybe have a conversation with your spouse on the word. and maybe even ask each other some questions like what could be some non-negotiables for your family in the morning? Is it prayer time? Is it time around the dinner table or the breakfast table? Is it feeding your kids a nourishing breakfast? maybe it's even just having quiet time on the deck as a family or just individually, you know. I don't know what that is for you, but I think the one question you could ask is what are some non-negotiables that we want to have in our morning? And then also what could make your mornings feel more peaceful? And I hope we hear our hearts here that the goal isn't to fit more into the morning. It's to make room for what really matters most. Yeah. I love that. I think that's what we're really about. You know, when you think about the rooted family, what we're doing here at Legacy Roots, it really isn't trying to just, be more productive so we can do more. I think you and I are so Passionate about seeing the body of Christ slow down enough, become more disciplined in the right areas so that you do have more precious moments with the things that matter most, God, your family, and the things that you're called to do. And so we're gonna walk you through our actual morning rhythm and Again, we don't share this with you because we're wanting you to copy what we do. We actually don't want you to copy what we do because you're a totally different family with a different circumstance, etc. And we hope that this just inspires you on what maybe could be possible for your family. But if you want the most perfect morning here we go. And you know it's funny because how many reiterations do you think we've done of our morning rhythm? Do you feel like we've changed it every year? looking back? Yeah, that's a great question. I think in the first couple of years they probably did change a little more often. when you have young kids, especially because you hit those points when they're really young, that you switch schools. I think that's what really has changed the most for us because that would change the times we had to leave in the morning or when kids were in a private school, for instance. then they had to have like the nicer uniforms already and stuff like that. Mm-hmm. And there's been some years where we've had kids in multiple places. So that kind of changed the morning because there were more stops to plan for. And like this year we have really consolidated because a lot of our kids are now going to the same school. Mm-hmm. So yeah, it's changed over the years for sure. I think it's changing a little bit less as they get older and we get more experienced though. And we've kind of found our own rhythm. Mm-hmm. but yeah, it definitely changed quite a bit in the first couple of years as we perfected what worked for us. Yeah. And so just to preface this, so out of the seven kids, five of them are gonna go to our hybrid school in town where they will go to school like in the classroom with teachers, three days a week. And then two days a week, Mondays and Fridays, I will actually be homeschooling them. And I homeschool them based on the curriculum that they receive in the school. So it's not like I'm creating all new curriculum, but this is where our family situation could be totally different than yours because we do have a slightly different morning rhythm for our in school days versus the days that the kids are home all day and homeschooling. we generally do the same thing, but we just have a little bit different timing, I would say. Yeah, there's an urgency to three days of the week because you have to be on time. And the others, I would say, don't have the same level of urgency. So that is that is different. You're absolutely right. And for us, we want to fit in family breakfast. That was important to us. That's kind of like a big rock for us. And what we have learned from our early years was that some decisions needed to be made the night before. So really our morning routine for us does start the night before. And I think that is a common need in a lot of families. Yeah. Things like trying to get people's clothes out for the next morning always makes things easier. Knowing that the backpacks are in the right spot where they should be so they can be grabbed and taken, you know, preparing lunch, we have a lot more peace when lunch is done the night before. Totally. Trying to squeeze it in the morning of. Well, and a little side note about lunches, we actually created a free resource for school lunch. So if this is a pain point for you, because I know before I had a plan Lunches for school drove me crazy. So we'll link it down below in the episode description. But we created a guide that has a full menu of lunch meals, including recipes and links. So hopefully that will help you have more peaceful lunch prepping this school year. one thing I love about this resource is I made these cute little note tags that they can print out and write little notes to their children to sneak into the lunch boxes. And so definitely download that because I think that's a sweet way to just give some life-giving words to your kids this school year. Yeah, It's a absolute must have resource. It's absolutely phenomenal what you created. Thank you. Yeah, it was fun. I love helping moms have more fun with this back to school routines. And I wanna say too, as you hear us talk about some of these things, one thing that's changed, especially in that night before step, is When as our kids get older, we make less decisions ourselves because we're actually handing our children some of these responsibilities. I don't sit and watch my 12 year old and our 10 year old pick out their outfits each night and like go pick it out for them. they are now old enough, they pick out their own outfit. And that's just an example of like as your kids get older, give them a role within this rhythm. And there are a lot of steps where you're you'll probably hear like, yeah, I can give that to them now, or you know, that's coming down the road And that has changed the morning rhythm over time. Totally. There's things I used to do ten years ago, five years ago, that I don't have to do. as much anymore. And that is really nice. Yeah, a few other examples would be like they each have a morning job is what we call it. And so some of those morning jobs are filling all the water bottles. So one of our kids fills everybody's water bottles with ice and water. Another kid unloads a dishwasher. Another kid sets the table for breakfast and gets anything on the table that we need for breakfast. another kid would be getting snacks for kids. when your family is involved in the rhythm, the rhythm is just so much more functional because everyone has a role. There's no one sitting around wondering what to do. And that does keep the morning rolling really well. This is where we're at right now, but we will be making tweaks for this next school year, which we can even hash out a little bit here on the podcast. So this is not exact of what we're doing this school year, but we can tell you kind of what we did last year and how things kind of worked with timestamps. And if you've been listening for a little bit on this podcast, you know we are very passionate about timestamps because a rhythm without a timestamp doesn't exist. And what we mean by that is that you have to put some sort of time, whether it's a day of the week or a literal time, like 7 a.m., on your rhythm. Because if you don't have a time, you don't even know when you're gonna be completing that rhythm. So it just becomes this like very ambiguous thing. Yeah, and this is all about how to get the ambiguity out of your morning. Yep. So let's talk about, I guess, just getting up. this is one of those things that changes as your kids mature. Our older girls set their own alarms now and we allow them to have that responsibility. I I would say we check on them. Like we kind of know, like, okay, if I didn't hear that alarm go off by now, or if I don't hear stirring by a certain time, I'm gonna go check on them. But otherwise we let them get up kind of first because they have the most going on. And then at this point in our lives, we do have to go wake up our our little children and help the little ones kind of like get out of bed and make sure that they're not gonna just roll over and go back to sleep. Yeah. And one thing we're not gonna touch on in this episode is our own personal morning rhythms before the kids get up. Christian and I wake up really early so that we can at least have an hour even two hours sometimes before the kids get up to do our own personal time with the Lord and our own getting ready. And so that is a different episode, I think, for a different day to talk about how do parents, you know, start the mornings off strong. But basically taking you through the rhythm beginning with the kids waking up. And how did we determine the time for the kids waking up in the morning? Well, we always kind of work backwards. So we'll start with What time do we need to leave? So hypothetically, just to help everybody who's listening, let's say that's eight o'clock in the morning. All right, I need to leave at eight o'clock. Well, I want 10 minutes after breakfast is over to putting their shoes on. So I, you know, back that up by 10 minutes. And then I say, Okay, so then we want 20 minutes to eat together. So now I'm gonna back that up 20 minutes. So I'm at 730. and just every task. timing it out roughly and then kind of backtracking into the time we need to wake up to make that happen. With a little buffer. we definitely put some buffer time into the rhythm because it's gonna go well like 80% of the time when you have a rhythm. There's always that 20% where things just don't go as you planned. And that's life. A hundred percent is is life. And I like how you even said 20% because I think we'd like to anticipate, things go right except for like five percent or ten percent of the time. One percent. But the reality is that it happens more often than we'd like it to happen. So you're right, we definitely build in more buffer time there. And so yeah, we're getting these kids up with all the other steps in mind and already all planned out. We like to start by getting them all dressed right away, especially making sure the little kids are are Putting their shirt on right. Or putting a shirt on. Yes, exactly. And I guess we're upstairs with them at that moment. really kind of just helping them until they're at an age where they can do it themselves. So we're not at this point. We we are at the point with some of our kids where they're just automatic. They just get up and they do the next right thing. but yeah, with little kids you you just can't. Expect them to do that. Something you can do as a tool to help your kids move through the morning is make a simple worksheet where it just lays out, you know, their six things that they have to do get up, make their bed, change, brush their teeth, put their socks on. And you can have it in a very simple page protector, like a clear page protector that you hang on the wall, use a dry erase marker, and let your kids just cross off each item. So that they can get into the rhythm. Eventually they don't need that sheet, but you know, maybe just starting off the school year, it might be helpful to create a simple document. just as like a tool to help your kids know what's the next right thing, because we can't expect our kids to hold like six different things in their head and do all those things, especially as a five year old. And I think in our rhythm, when you show up to the breakfast table, there's a bunch of things that need to be done. Yeah. like, are teeth brushed? Is your snack ready? Is your backpack packed up ahead of time? Your water bottle. Your water bottle done. Yeah. All of these things. And then we sit down for breakfast because we want to feel like everything is complete. And so If you don't want to be, you know, reminding them like, did you do this and this and this and this? a tool like that is great because it really helps them move through each stage that they need to do and then show up and they feel prepared and they know they're confident they're ready to have breakfast or walk out the door or whatever you do in your rhythm. Let's talk about breakfast because I know not every family maybe has the capacity to to sit down and have like a formal sit-down. But you know, for you and I, we really don't make this fancy. For maybe one meal of the week, it is a hot breakfast that I'll have made, whether it's eggs or some sort of casserole or pancakes or something. But the other days really are just a system that we have. And each day we just do the same thing. Mondays we will do bagels. You know, Tuesday we would do cereal or hot cereal, Wednesdays we do waffles. And so we just kind of follow the schedule and it's it goes back to the whole like, do we wanna make a decision about this each day? No, we don't. We don't want to decide in the morning what are our kids eating for breakfast. And if your kids are like our kids, they don't want to eat cereal every single day. They're gonna complain about it. Although I feel like I grew up on cereal and I was perfectly fine, but maybe kids are different these days. We're gonna All the young whippers snappers are so different these days. We give them way more options. Maybe that's the problem. I love what you said there though. About here's a simple way to make the decision ahead of time. If if it is cereal for you every day, cool. Like it's just come down and have cereal. There's no other choice. It also simplifies our shopping though. opening up the shopping cart at the start of the week, you already get to say, Okay, I know we don't have any bagels, boom, plop the bagels in. It's not, are we gonna have bagels or are we not? And totally it's like, dude, just put them in the cart. Yep. yep, waffle Wednesday. Gotta put the waffles in the cart. Okay. We need six boxes of cereal to get through the week. Here's the six boxes of cereal. You know, it's so many decisions are made ahead of time because we already have decided what we're gonna eat throughout the week. Yeah. Well, and I think too, there might be some of you listening that think, Wow, that's such a beautiful concept of sitting down together as a family. And I remember before we did this for them, I thought it kind of felt impossible with how much we had going on in the morning before we had to go out the door. And I think that when we feel like maybe something is out of reach, but we really desire it for our family, the best question is really to ask how can we make this possible? I think some of us just automatically assume that it's not possible for our family because of our circumstances. And sure, we all have different challenges and roadblocks. I mean, we have a special needs baby and there's a lot of things around her that poses their own challenges that we could use as an excuse to not do family breakfast, for example. But I think that you have to decide for your family, like what is the most important thing? how do you want to feel in the morning? And how do you want to show up as a parent? And then ask yourself, how can we make this possible? And it may require you to make certain sacrifices. For example, you may have to get up earlier than you have ever gotten up before. or perhaps you have to discipline your kids in a way that helps them to understand the new changes in the morning. And you don't want to maybe discipline their your kids about this, or you are dealing with grumpy teenagers who don't want to get up and sit at the breakfast table in the morning with the family. You know, there's gonna be different challenges that come up. But I do think that if you want to do something as wonderful and meaningful as a family breakfast, I think it really can be possible for any family as long as you just determine what are some of the ways we can make this work. And our family breakfast is not super long. Yeah. I don't want everybody to think, we sit here for thirty to forty five minutes and have like a church service. No. No. it's truthfully like maybe 15 minutes at the most. 20 minutes. And we do have a devotion at the end of breakfast, it's always very short, but you know, meaningful and we pray together and then it's go time. But at that point it's really just, you know, shoes, coat, backpack, out the door. brush your teeth and out the door. Yeah, one little element we threw into our morning rhythm several years ago that we still stick with is having some sort of Bible verse or affirmation that we say as a family before we kiss them goodbye. And one year it was the Shema love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength. love your neighbor as yourself. So we all would say that together as a family before we left. one year it was truly saying an affirmation about who we were in Christ. last year we said a Bible verse, first John four nineteen he we love because he first loved us and so just to give you a few examples but it's kind of fun to just have something that unifies the family before we all say goodbye. And you could even do this in the car, right before you say goodbye to the kids, or you could do this, you know, right before you begin your homeschool. I think the key in the morning rhythm, when you think about time stamps, is really knowing what time do you have to either be getting out the door or beginning homeschool or beginning your work, like whatever that looks like for you. And then really working backwards so that way you know. what the timestamp is for your wake up and then any core things in the rhythm. So not to overcomplicate this, but everyone's gonna have something that is the most meaningful part of their rhythm. And for our family breakfast, we all know like, okay, at this time, like this last year, it was 710. If we are not sitting down at the table at 710, we are behind. And that timestamp was actually a critical timestamp for us because all of us as a family committed to showing up so that we could have a a nice, peaceful family breakfast. Yeah. And it worked great. Yeah. Can I ask you something? When was the last time you actually felt at peace? Not just productive, not just caught up, but settled. Because most of us aren't lacking desire for a slower, deeper life. We're just stuck in the busyness that keeps us rushing right past it. That's why we created the Slow and Saber Society. It's a snail mail club. Yes, it comes straight to your mailbox. It's a simple, tangible way to slow down each month. A piece of art, a cozy recipe, and a letter designed to help you reconnect with what actually matters. With God, with your family, and with your own soul. If your life has felt full but not meaningful, this is your invitation to begin again. You can learn more or join us at legacyrootsco.com/slash mailclub. And right now, if you use code podcast, you'll get 50% off your first month so you can try it out. Now back to the episode. Now let's talk about this year because the school year is upon us. Actually, this week our kids are going back to school. So I'm wondering what do you think worked really well last year that we should definitely continue into this year? Last year, you know, I feel like we really nailed our family breakfast rhythm last year. I think in prior years we were always trying to figure out the time for everyone to sit down at the table. I feel like everyone showed up for the most part at the table on time and we actually got to enjoy a wonderful breakfast. I think we were more realistic as to what time can we sit down at the table and what time do we actually need to leave the the breakfast table to get out the door on time. I think what those timestamps did was really helped us to evaluate if we were missing them, what could we tweak to make them happen? Yeah. So I remember like we weren't great about getting the clothes ready the night before for a while. Yeah. And so that tweak came because it was like we're showing to the table at seven fifteen. It's seven seventeen, I don't know. every minute is so precious in the morning. It would tend to be like seven twenty-five though. And when we realized, okay, one tweak we could make was that decision of close was made the night before. Uh-huh. It gave us a better chance and opportunity to show up by seven ten. So that's where the timestamps become valuable because then you can be like, I have to stick to that. So now that I'm not sticking to it. What could I do differently to make that happen? Yeah, the timestamps, and this is with any rhythm, the timestamps are your accountability. But the cool thing about it is you're setting the timestamp. So it's not like someone's holding a hammer over you of like, you have to be to breakfast by 710. you and your spouse get to determine what those timestamps look like. And then yeah, if you're missing it every every morning. This would be a time to say, all right, what do we need to tweak so that we can make this happen the way that we wanted it to happen in the first place? What would you say maybe didn't work, or at least didn't work as consistently as we would have hoped? I would say the thing that I remember wanting more of was a little more buffer time after breakfast before getting out the door. And not actually that. I think I actually want us to leave for school sooner. I think we need to adjust when we actually leave the house. I think our kids want that too. Cause we do have a few kids who actually get stressed out about not leaving on time. I I appreciate this about them. They're very timely. And they I think punctuality is a value to a few of these kids. And they don't even want to be punctual. They wanted to be early. Well, I think that is punctual. People who are punctual, if you're not early or late. That's the value. Yeah. You know, people who are on time usually value being early to things. And so I agree with you. I think I think our entire family would appreciate it. Yeah. So I yeah, I think because we were leaving at like 745, I think was the goal this last year. I think even just shooting to be driving away at 740. Even though to you and I that feels like way early because we live like three minutes from school. I think our kids would really value us being intentional about leaving earlier and making that a more critical timestamp because I think we were a little bit more loosey goosey with that leaving time. And yeah, sometimes we would be late to school and they were not happy about that, of course, you know. was there anything that you feel like we could adjust or tweak for this next school year in the morning rhythm? I think we were pretty good about getting ready the night before. Let's call it like eighty percent consistent. I do think if we could get closer to ninety or ninety-five percent consistent, there'd be a lot more peace. like we were pretty good about getting clothes ready the night before, and lunches, but not always on top of it. And that side what I think often led to, you know, getting to the breakfast table a little later, leaving a little later than we wanted, kind of like that waterfall effect. And I think if we could get better in that particular area, just more consistent. I we already d know what to do. It's just being up on it a little more, that we would leave at a more consistent time in the morning. there's so much that happens in such a condensed time frame that anything we could do the night before consistently, and and we saw the value of that. Yeah. And I think we're just that consistency will will only make it better. Yeah, I agree. the consistency is truly key. I think a rhythm really is defined by its consistency. I think that's what makes it a rhythm. is it's because you're choosing a few different activities that you're gonna do over and over and over again and you choose those specific activities because you know how fruitful those activities are And that's really what we want you to hear today is that a rhythm just isn't a rule. it's not this strict way of living. A rhythm truly is a framework that you can adjust as your family changes. And that's why we wanted to walk you through our current rhythm and maybe some of thoughts that we have about tweaking our morning rhythm the school year, just so you can see that this isn't something that like It's a law that our family is living by year after year. We see this as a fruitful opportunity for our family. And so we want to make the most of it. And to do that, we do make adjustments to our rhythms. You know, when we get to a new season, we think about how we can adjust our bedtime rhythm, which by the way, if you want to listen to a raw conversation on our bedtime rhythm. You can go back and listen to that episode a few ones before. We can link it down below. But you can hear in that episode, like we were live talking about our struggles with our bedtime rhythm and the changes or the adjustments we needed to make. just know you can try a morning rhythm and maybe in two weeks from now you are making tweaks to it. To the framework and that's okay. Yeah, we constantly have to refine. Our kids grow, our schedules change, activities come and go. literally the season can change from fall to winter, which might change your time you have to leave because now you have new weather to deal with. Yeah, gear. my gosh. The snow gear, if you live in a snow state, that drastically changes your morning rhythm because you have to put your kids in all that snow gear. It you need like 15 extra minutes to get out the door. It's so true. It's so real. there's so many things that can change, but it's not about throwing the baby out with a bathwater. It's about just a refining. Yeah. And a a shift, a small adjustment. And those really add up over time. I mean you you won't perfect this in your first month or two, but once you get into the flow, it everything will be on autopilot. Yep. Yeah. Because when a rhythm stops serving your family, you don't have to abandon that rhythm. You just need to refine it. And I really hope that you are encouraged by that. It is not something that you have to just ditch altogether. And so, where does faith fit into the morning? Because I think that we deeply want the Lord to be the center of our home. In our family life. And we want a rooted family because we want a rooted family Christ. you brought this up actually earlier, that the morning rhythm, it creates the most beautiful opportunity to center your family on Christ before the world speaks into your family. And many of us are sending our kids out into the world during the day. You know, there are probably also many of you that are homeschooling, which is beautiful, but you still have lots of different things to do during the day. It's not like you're just reading the Bible with your kids all day. so I think that the morning really is this beautiful opportunity. So could you speak to that as an encouragement to the families listening on how they can take a moment for growing their family's faith? during their morning rhythm. A lot of families we work with would say that God is the center of their home, or they want Christ to be the foundation of their home. And think of it as like the fly on the wall analogy, or like if aliens were watching from outer space, what would they say is important to you? And the morning just has such an amazing opportunity to incorporate if we claim that God is. Like the most important thing in our life, creating the space for that to be true. So, what you're saying is don't just say that God is the center of your life. Like, if if there was a true fly on the wall looking at your family, would that fly say in its observations, like, wow, faith is the center of this family? And this is the moment that is so precious to start the day that way. I think that when we start our day and then we give ourselves the opportunity to continue to meditate and to continue to ponder. I mean, our little kids might not do that, but what we do that as adults. And I mean, how many times have we taken a devotion that happened in the morning? And then later there's some practical application we get to reinforce later. Yeah. I mean, a simple thing is talking about kindness. And you find one of your kids did something unkind to another kid. And, you know, we often will take that devotion we had in the morning and say, Hey, do you remember what we talked about this morning? And simply saying, How well are we living that out right now in this moment? And immediately they go, You're right, I'm not. And The good thing is now we're being consistent in our character development. And so there's just so many good things that come from taking this opportunity to incorporate your faith into the start of your day. we're talking about a quick devotional for in our family. This usually takes five five minutes. we do incorporate a a short prayer before we leave that usually tries to relate to the rest of our day. And you know, we go from there. So we're talking about six to seven minutes total, but there's just so many opportunities for fruit that come from incorporating faith into our family morning rhythm. So, you know, could you Just start with praying together if you're not praying together now. Could you read one Bible verse a week? I mean, we we've done that a ton of times. We just read one verse and we read it every day. There's something about just ingraining that into our souls. could mom and dad pray together before the kids wake up? Could scripture just become part of your your morning, like reading reading a short passage together? Buy a quick devotional. I mean, we've shared multiple devotions and we can share them again of just here's a quick one page read. Yeah. But they have questions and they're relatable and they create conversation. But I guess all I'm trying to say here is, you know, don't just add spiritual practices into a chaotic rhythm. Yeah. it'll just get completely lost. Instead build your rhythm in a way that creates space. To have a spiritual practice that you're not doing today. Yeah. And you don't need more than a few minutes to make that happen. Yeah. I think about some of the the great faith giants that we love to read, you know, their biographies and learn from. One of them being Corey Tenboom, who, if you know her, she played a pivotal role in rescuing and protecting Jews during the Holocaust in Holland. And she says in a couple of her books what she remembers about her dad is that he led every single morning a devotional with the family and whoever was living in the home at the time. And there are other greats, like Elizabeth Elliot, missionary to Ecuador in the 50s, who also writes in her memoir, her dad, she loved the morning breakfast because her dad always led them in prayer. And so I think about, you know, what has stood the test of time as a faith practice in believers, rooted believers for generations. And it seems to be this commonality of a discipline or consistency with prayer scripture reading in the morning before we all go into the world. I think that's beautifully said. And it takes time to get there. And so we really want to encourage you. Like we understand right now your mornings may feel really chaotic. And you see the end transformation, but there is this massive gap between the two. And that's completely normal. So my question for you today is what's one small thing you can do to get a little bit of the chaos out? What's one thing you can tweak that's gonna start to bring you peace? Could you just get everybody up a few minutes earlier? Could you maybe have that backpack ready the night before? Could you have a breakfast planned out ahead of time? Could you just stop hitting that snooze button? Which when we are tired and exhausted is so easy to hit and then fall behind. Uh-huh. Yeah, maybe it's even just choosing a time to sit together for just five minutes for prayer before you head out the door. Or maybe just establishing a departure time. Like maybe you don't have a consistent time you're leaving and you're late most mornings. but I do think that that's a really wise piece of advice of just choosing one small thing you can start with. And then as the weeks go on the school year, then you can start to add more. I always remember this with building rhythms, winning baguettes more winning. It's like When you start feeling successful in one small way in your rhythm, you are excited and you want to keep winning more and you stick with it. And so we want you to do something that you actually will win at tomorrow. Like, what could you do tomorrow? Not one week from now, not one month from now. Like literally say, you know what, we're gonna do this tomorrow and then do it. And you're gonna get that endorphin rush. You're gonna like feel like a million bucks because you stuck to your word and then you can try something else to add to it in the future. Yeah, we've we've talked a bunch about being on autopilot, and I think the right time to make the next tweak is when you've made an adjustment and you've done it long enough that that adjustment feels like autopilot. So now you can move on to making the next adjustment. without feeling overwhelmed or that you've taken on too much I mean sometimes when we try to make changes we almost feel like we're bringing in more chaos. Yeah. And so it will limit any of those kinds of feelings. Yeah. But get make a tweak. Get it to autopilot. Mix the next tweak. Now you got two things on autopilot. Make the third tweak. Okay, now great. Now those are on autopilot. And you're gonna travel further and farther. To where you want to end up in your destination. Yeah. And so if you want a tool to help you just really hone in on this morning rhythm, a tool that could help you and your spouse to create a morning rhythm that you feel excited about, we have a free resource that will help you. It's just a one page worksheet. It's called the Rooted Morning Reset. And you can download that right there in the the episode description. Just download that for free. Print it out. Sit down with your spouse and just go through those questions. They're very similar to the questions that we've just gone through on the episode. and it will help you to determine what is the right morning rhythm for you and your family. in this upcoming school year. And like we shared, if you're not even, if you don't have young kids at home, you maybe are single, you can still develop a morning rhythm that you feel excited about and that will help you start your day off well. So make sure you download that free resource. Yes, it's amazing resource. It's really gonna be very helpful to you. And we just want you to remember your morning isn't about getting everybody to school on time. We're talking about how do we want your family to enter the day together? How do you want to create margin? How do you want to prepare? All of this teaches your children these really valuable skills. How to be on time, how to care for each other, how to make space for the Lord as as they go out into the world and live their own lives someday, and how to live intentionally instead of living in a reactive state day after day after day. Yeah, you can't control what kind of day you're going to have, but you can choose how you're going to begin it. And I would just encourage you, don't let the day decide who you're going to be. there are so many things that can come up when you first wake up in the morning that can throw you off. Instead, I want you to build a rhythm. That will give you the best chance to become the people you want to be as a family. So the day may not start off well, sickness, you know, the weather, who knows what. But the morning rhythm is there to help you continue to consistently be exactly the type of rooted family you want to be. So next week, we're gonna wrap up the series, this back to school series, and share with you one of the biggest sources of school day stress, which is lunchtime. whether you're a homeschool parent or you send your kids off to school, lunch during the school year can be stressful if you don't have a plan. And so we're gonna talk about creating a lunch rhythm and it's going to help make feeding your family a whole lot easier this school year. So be sure to come back for next week. But thank you for being here today. We're so grateful to have you as a listener and we hope that this episode provided some great value for you as you continue to develop your morning rhythm. Yes, drop a comment on what tweak are you gonna make on whatever platform you're listening. Also leave us a five-star review if this podcast was helpful to you. Share with a friend, and we look forward to talking to you next time on the Rooted Family Podcast.